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Darkfall
Unofficial FAQ -
Skills
What is a kingdom?
Clan owned territories are called kingdoms and they build a city
with a castle as guild house.
On Endgame and Max level
Before I go on, lets set things straight. DF is not a Level game,
it is a skills game. I agree though, that a game with skills whenever
you compare someones skills vs someone elses skills you can in fact say
so as to reflect the "character strength" of someone that
"they are of a higher level", well, in a way at least.
However, do not forget, that you can also allow a skill to deteriorate
and reskill however you like, albeit it takes time.
Another thing is that and most people automatically think "combat
strength" is how much stronger are people compared to others? Well,
the answer is a few newbies, are supposed to be even match vs one maxxed
out as long as the player behind the keyboard skills are equally
matched. On the below listed link it says 2 newbies, I always thought it
was 4 but could be I am old and wrong.
Some more thoughts on how it works can be found on this post
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/sh...light=abilities
Interesting comment by a player Keeperofstars who
explains it very good
NOTE: The
below comparisions is taken from Ultima Online as a
reference. This does not mean this is how it will be in
DF. But it does raise some very interesting points.
Quote: Keeperofstars from darkfall forums
Man people are to use to UO skill leveling crap of nowadays.
In the original version of UO making it to GM in one skill
would take you a year of hard work.
The way this game works with skills is pretty simple if you
just break it down.
There are two caps, a hard cap for the max a skill can reach,
think last word is its 100.
Then there is a soft cap of all your overall skills you can
earn, before you start suffering a slow down of skill gains.
NOTICE: SLOW DOWN NOT STOP.
Different skills take up more or less of your soft cap.
To illustrate.
Lets say the overall softcap is 5000 points.
Player A picks up a few melee skills.
Swords cost 10 softcap points per skill point. So when he
masters swords he has 1000 points used up.
Now to round out his melee he picks a few other skills up.
Parry 5 to 1 ratio
dodge 5 to 1 ratio
shield use 5 to ratio
mace 10 to 1 ratio
riposte 5 to 1 ratio
right now he has used up 4,000 of his points
He wishes to add some crafting so he take up smithing
mining 5 to 1 ratio
He is not at 4,500 points
He starts on smithing
Smithing 10 to 1 ratio
He will soft cap out at 50 skill points in smithing.
Now for the next 2,000 softcap points he will gain half as
fast as before.
This means it will now take him twice as long to finish out
the last 50 skill points of mining compared to someone who
picked smithing from start.
The devs have said you will run up your basic skills quickly
to allow you to PvP effectively in a short amount of time.
They have also said it will take you a decent amount of time
to master your choosen main skills. And to master others will
be tedious. So why would anyone spend time learning more then
just the initial softcap? Simple
While I gain little advantage over the person how already has
the same skill mastered I have more options.
Example: A necromancer grandmasters out and then doesnt bother
picking up more skills past the soft cap. I decided to
grandmaster necromancer and work hard to gm my fire magic
skill.
The necromancer heads off to hunt and comes across someone
with diease buffs and posion resists on armor, the necromancer
is now faced with a much harder fight.
I come across the same guy later and go crap best use my fire
spell to take him out. I have no better skill then anyone who
focused on fire spells to begin with I just have a new option.
Open to me. |
And on a following post he mentions
Quote:
In
addition while UO was easy to cap out in b/c you had a hard
cap of 700, it also did not provide the sheer number of skills
/ spells you can have in DF. I think UO had was 30ish skills
overall 50 at max to choose from. That is much different from
being offered 500 skills.
The devs have said you will gain skills quickly to a mid range
point and then taper off a bit, what this allows is for you to
reroll your player completely without too much time lose if
you do so at mid range. If you wait till you are the
grandmaster of buttwhooping and make a change well you will be
back to a mid range quickly but not at your previous expert
level. However your player skills with the game will make you
just as efficent as before just have to play a bit
differently.
The game focus half on skill only for a time reward character
building aspect and then other half on player brains, not so
much twitch reflexes as just basic smarts.
No to fights will ever be the same as the player skill will
always be changing. |
How many skills can I have?
Nobody knows the number of skills that will be implemented,
numbers varies from time to time to be somewhat between 500-1000.
How will learning a new skill work?
Learning a new skill is done either from a player or a NPC
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Quote (Ricki): Our character
advancement system is 100% skill based, meaning you learn a
new skill or spell from an NPC or another player...
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Quote:
| Thanks
to Metamorphosis of the Eleador from DF forums: With
regard to players learning other players skills or spells,
there are limits of course. You will always need to have a
certain level of the skill before you can teach it to
another player. You can only teach a person up to a degree
of what you know. For example you might be able to teach
another person up to 1/3 of the value you have in the skill.
Skill or spells gained by special circumstances (like
quests) will most likely not be able to be taught to other
players. This might change during beta, but it's how it
looks at the moment. |
Magic spells as skills?
Each magic spell will be a separate spell or belong to a spell
school as listed below and yes, they are both separate skills. "A
spell = 1 skill" or "A school = 1 skill".
Quote:
| Quote
(Claus ): you need Lesser Magic 40 to learn Greater
Magic”, racial requirements such as “you need to be an
Ork to learn the Frenzy skill”, etc. Many skills and
spells can be learned freely.....We dont want to get into
too much detail at this early stage, but spells will be
divided into several different schools of magic: Lesser
Magic, Greater Magic, Element of Fire, Element of Earth,
Element of Water, Element of Air, Witchcraft, Spellsinging,
Necromancy, Wild Magic, Arcane Magic and Ritual Magic. In
addition there are some special spells that do not fit
directly into any school of magic, such as racial specialty
spells. |
Melee skills?
Each melee "special attack" or "special
move". The way you do them in say DAOC, uses a particular skill.
There are also references to standalone groups or weapon classes. (see
magic above)
Quote:
| Quote
(Tasos): All the special moves (called Weapon Skills in
our system) |
Healing?
Quote:
Quote
(Claus): Healing Skill (bandages), Healing Spells,
Healing Potions, Healing Herbs.
Healing definitely plays a role in combat. |
Running?
Quote:
Quote
(Claus): Monsters in Darkfall all move at different
speeds. A zombie is slow, and a wolf moves pretty fast. Some
monsters will be slower than players, others will be faster.
That being said, player speed also varies a lot. A dwarf is
slightly slower than a human, and a player wearing full
platemail armor, is slightly slower than a player wearing
leather armor. But it does not end there – we have various
skills and spells in Darkfall that will alter a players
running speed – such as the skills “Running” and
“Sprint”, spells such as “Haste”, “Slow”,
“Stun”, “Root” etc. Other skills may influence
movement speed indirectly, such as “Wear Heavy Armor”,
which will reduce the penalties on movement speed by wearing
the mentioned full platemail.
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Movement in wilderness?
Quote:
| Quote
(Yiannis Koumoutzelis): The terrain features true
mountains over 500m tall and overhanging cliffs which you
can actually climb if you have the skill, or use hidden
passages if you do not. |
Racial skills?
When it comes to certain skills some races have more of a natural
knack of it or affinity. Gemcutting can be learned by Dwarves but Gnomes
have an extra bonus (Gnomes are an NPC race, added for clarification).
Just how the bonus will actually be implemented remains to be seen.
Skill flavor?
Skills also seems to come in at least two flavors, a basic and a
master skill line.
Quote:
| Quote
(Tasos): Creating armor and weapons out of magical
metals requires that you become proficient in advanced
skills called Master Weaponsmithing and Master
Armorsmithing. Predictably, characters need to have a very
high skill score in the simpler smithing skills
(Weaponsmithing and Armorsmithing) before they can begin to
learn the corresponding advanced skills. To be called a
dwarven magesmith, a player will be expected to have almost
perfect scores in all four of the skills. |
Skill trees?
Above post mentioning different skill flavors point us to the existence
of skill trees
Quote:
Quote
(Claus): Yes, Darkfall has requirements for certain
skills, and these requirements come in various shapes and
forms. We have skills requirements such as “you need
Lesser Magic 40 to learn Greater Magic”, racial
requirements such as “you need to be an Ork to learn the
Frenzy skill”, etc. Many skills and spells can be learned
freely, but we do indeed have requirements or a skill tree
system if you will.
It just makes a lot of sense to have a skill tree system in
Darkfall, since it awards specialization over raw time
investment to some degree. It also helps make the game more
interesting, since it automatically creates more character
diversity. Darkfall features a mixture: both a skill tree to
follow as well as stand-alone skills.”
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How many skills can I learn?
Quote:
| Quote
(---): You will be able to pick from about 95% of the
skills, and there is no limit to how many skills you can
learn. The exact cost of learning skills is yet to be
determined (obviously a game balance issue), but we expect
to make skills cost money. Some skills will require you to
solve quests, some will only be tough to you by NPCs in
remote and hard to find places, etc. And the 5% skills you
wont be able to learn is race specific skills, and prestige
class skills. |
Quote:
| Quote
(Vulpes-SoL): Ok, seems people still got a little
difficult grasping the idea of "there is no skill cap,
no limit on number of skills you will be able to have and
how skill increase will go. So let me do a comparision. Say
your going to climb a mountain, take Mount Everest as an
example. Your aiming for the top (= Maxxed all skills). Now,
your carrying a backpack. For each yard you take (= 1 skill
point gained in game), you put an apple into backpack (an
average size normal apple, no quantum mechanics fantasy
apple, common sense apple). At first, you run at full speed,
numbers of apples increase and as time goes it gets alot
heavier, you start walking, later you going start more or
less crawling, dragging the backpack behind you. It will be
almost impossible drag whole backpack all 8.000 meter (its
an expandable magical backpack) up the mountain due to its
weight. Same thing is how Darkfall skill accumulation is
going to be. |
So with the above information....
Capping
To summarize it it all, how long will it take
to max out a skill?
Quote:
| Quote
(Claus): maxing out all skills and spells will take you
forever |
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